Biology 11th Edition by Gerald Audesirk,Teresa Audesirk,Bruce Byers

Exercise 6

Many years ago, some researchers reported that they could transfer learning from one animal (a flatworm) to another by feeding trained animals to untrained animals. Further, they claimed that RNA was the active molecule of learning. Given your knowledge of the roles of RNA and protein in cells, do you think that a specific memory (for example, remembering the base sequences of codons of the genetic code) could be encoded by a specific molecule of RNA and that this RNA molecule could transfer that memory to another person? In other words, in the future, could you learn biology by popping an RNA pill? If so, how would this work? If not, can you propose a reasonable hypothesis for the results with flatworms? How would you test your hypothesis?